Back in 2017, Cuphead had taken the gaming scene by storm. It had sold over 2 million copies, and reached number 7 on Mxdwn’s Top 10 Games of 2017 List. With its unique inspiration of classic cartoons from the 1930’s and 1940’s (a la Steamboat Willie), and completely hand drawn appearance, and difficult playstyle, the game had everything in the right place at the right time and has already won the hearts over many. But since then, there hasn’t been much for announcements aside from possible sequel, or a Nintendo Switch port coming, not much has happened in the world of Cuphead.
That is until the developers, Studio MDHR, decided to drop an update for the game out of nowhere. This update adds everything, and possible more than it lets on. The update is large enough that it brings the game to version 1.2, the biggest patch yet.
The first bit of the update is allowing players a character select. In the beginning, if players wanted to play co-op, the second player would automatically be put as Mugman, Cuphead’s brother. Players will now be able to go in and choose between Cuphead or Mugman themselves without needing to be player one or player two. Along with the choice of these two, there are new animation intros and art for Cuphead and Mugman, as well as new fight intros and multiple versions of these.
11 more languages have been added to the game. But it’s not just the bosses or characters or text in another language. Expert calligraphers were brought in to recreate the boss level titling and lettering in the style of the early 20’s and 30’s cartoon of the language’s nation. So Chinese will have lettering done in the classic style, Korean, so on and so forth; to keep with the overall feel and aesthetic of the game.
But the update goes beyond adding these new features and general bug fixes. Reddit user Electoon had written on the update post about certain bosses having routes with new assets and new boss patterns. Which means the boss fights might not be the same as they were the first time around. But before any claims were disputed as false, Youtuber Juan Velasco was able to find secret boss, The Radish, that was previously claimed to have not been used in the game.
With the new update and all these new boss patterns as well as secret bosses, there may be a lot more in the game than what’s on the surface level. It’s worth checking it out as this update is in fact free to anyone who already owns the game.